Family doctors are better than surgeons at breaking bad news to patients, according to research carried out at Warwick University.

Family doctors are better than surgeons at breaking bad news to patients, according to research carried out at Warwick University.

Dr Mandy Barnett, senior lecturer in palliative medicine at the university, looked at patients' experiences during the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

GPs got better ratings than surgical staff in showing sensitivity when they had to give patients bad news.

Dr Barnett is now calling for better assessment of communication skills and training for hospital specialists.

During the research her team graded experiences of hearing bad news from "positive" to "very negative'' and asked for nominations for the most and least helpful doctors they had seen.

They also assessed patients for depression and psychological distress.

Among the findings, patients particularly appreciated doctors who gave them the opportunity to ask questions and discuss their concerns rather than being brusque and impatient.

The more extremely good or bad the experience of hearing bad news, the more likely the patient was to remember vivid details even years later.

There was no connection between the way bad news was delivered and the patient's long-term chances of becoming depressed.

Although the majority of nominated "most helpful" doctors were GPs, bad news is far more likely to be delivered by hospital specialists and research shows that patients expect and want this.

In about 90 per cent of cases, it is a hospital doctor, usually a surgeon, who tells a patient they have cancer.

But in Dr Barnett's survey surgeons were significantly more likely to be rated "less helpful".

Dr Barnett said: "GPs may already have a rapport with their patients which a hospital doctor is unlikely to match, but surgeons could also be missing out on important communications training because of the 'apprenticeship' model used to teach junior doctors in hospitals."

The research is published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.